Relationships are political. Although defined by love, relationships are, like politics, characterised by power plays and power struggles. As someone who is now very much on the older side of campus, I have been thinking a lot about the power and responsibility that age grants you in social relations. This is something that Sally Rooney, throughout her writing, has explored and exposed with both discerning insight and poetic craft. In her latest release, Intermezzo, she does it again, shining a light on the power that is dictated within a relationship by one’s age gap and gender, and the interplay between them.
“But maturity runs according to the individual, and at a certain point these social constructions no longer serve us”
I think, historically, there are numerous factors, all stemming from the patriarchy, that have led to the construction of the social rule that it is acceptable for men to date younger women, but not the other way around. The paternalistic male provider would formerly have needed time to accrue wealth to support his wife who would make home, with the contribution she would bring to the union only being aided by her youth; enhanced child bearing ability and the fetishised purity of virginity and innocence that has been historically valued in women. There is also the biological argument that boys mature at a later age than girls. But maturity runs according to the individual, and at a certain point these social constructions no longer serve us. The man’s role in a relationship is no longer that of bread winner and the woman’s is no longer that of baby maker. Might we all not better be served if the power implications of individual relationships were considered more important than archaic social rules about who gets to date whom?
Rooney exposes clearly in Intermezzo that it is not the gender of the older or younger party that determines the perverted or genuine nature of the relationship but rather the intricacies of the relationship therein, the intentions and feelings of those involved. The protagonists of Intermezzo, Peter and Ivan, are brothers set apart in age by ten years. Both are involved in relationships with a sizable age gap, with 32 year old Peter seeing the 22 year old final year college student Naomi, whilst Ivan dates Margaret, a 36 year old recently separated from her husband.
Despite the comparable age gaps between the partners in each couple, the lens through which each relationship is viewed is laden with double standards. Peter, in a moment absolutely devoid of self-awareness, asks Ivan what it is that must be wrong with Margaret for her to be dating a man so much younger than herself. Margaret, meanwhile, is all too aware of the social judgement that she will be met with should her relationship with Ivan become public knowledge, “To know herself the object of disgust and vilification, not only imagined but real.” It is only at the novel’s end that Peter realises the genuine and unselfish nature of Margaret’s affection for his brother and “the inexpressible depth of his misunderstanding” of their relationship and, by extension, of “life itself.”
“The older party in a relationship almost always has a certain degree of power that both parties might not be aware of”
No matter what age you are, you always think you are fully grown, able to take care of yourself and maintain control. This was certainly the case for me when I was starting off in college and involved, however fleetingly, with boys on the older side of campus. I think, however, that the older party in a relationship almost always has a certain degree of power that both parties might not be aware of. Peter considers the younger Naomi as “his little plaything,” with the power dynamics of their relationship being further skewed by the financial support and accommodation that he provides her with. Yet Peter is completely spared any social vilification for their relationship, with his fear of social sanctioning only emerging when he endeavours to enter into a non conventional relationship that would break with society’s monogamous standards by allowing him to be not only with Naomi but also with Sylvia, Peter’s former girlfriend, current best friend and long term life partner, “the social death that awaits him now. What will he tell people.”
“There are times in life when a union cannot be understood through description and can only make sense if lived”
But there is more to relationships than power, and the most profound relationships can undermine the social forces that seek to curtail their existence. These are relationships that make sense in spite of the societal policing that would rather they didn’t. As Amia Srinivasan highlights in her book The Right to Sex, using a public and political lens to try and understand private realms of life does not always work, for the nuances of personal lives cannot always be comprehended through political thinking. There are times in life when a union cannot be understood through description and can only make sense if lived. I say this as someone who was raised in a non-nuclear family built upon unconventional unions. If you were to consider the relational agreement formed between Peter, Sylvia and Naomi by the novel’s end purely through a public lens, you might come to the conclusion that something is amiss. But when you consider that their union is formed between people who love one another and want to continue loving one another in the manner that they do, the need to critique it politically is removed. And so, whilst relationships are often influenced by power dynamics and politics, they cannot be reduced to these interplays.
In succumbing to her feelings for Ivan rather than policing her actions so as to satisfy society, Margaret blows open the possibilities for her life, “in ten years’ time, against all odds, they might look back and laugh together.” It is, I think, in the most profound of relationships that these societal considerations become less relevant; for what worth does social policing hold in the face of love? It might just be these very unions, which are formed in spite of fear of judgement, in which the parties involved persist despite the risk of social persecution, that the relationships in question are strongest, most meaningful, most characterised by love itself.
